Month: March 2013

Here’s the updated cut-and-paste of the online story I just filed on the Sharks trading Douglas Murray to the Pittsburgh Penguins for a pair of second-round draft choices.

By David Pollak
dpollak@mercurynews.com

ANAHEIM – The Sharks have traded rugged defenseman Douglas Murray to the Pittsburgh Penguins for second-round draft choices in 2013 and 2014, the first of what could be several moves as general manager Doug Wilson assesses his struggling team’s needs now and in the future.

Murray, 33, was an eighth-round 1999 draft pick who paid off for the Sharks, playing in 451 games with San Jose. His offensive numbers – six goals and 53 assists – didn’t indicate his value to the team as a 6-foot-3, 240-pound bruiser who could drop the gloves when necessary to protect his teammates.

“San Jose has become home for me and I’m leaving with an empty feeling with the teams we had here not getting it done,” Murray said Monday morning. “But it’s extremely exciting going to Pittsburgh, going to the best team in the league already. They always have some great players and I’m just excited to get there, get used to the team and take a run at the Stanley Cup.”

In a prepared statement, Wilson called Murray “a warrior for our hockey club for the past eight seasons,” adding that the trade “places Douglas in a quality situation which he deserves.”

Murray is in the final year of a contract that would have paid him $2.5 million this season if the lockout had not occurred. He becomes an unrestricted free agent July 1.

A native of Bromma, Sweden, Murray played a more North American style of play than many Europeans and graduated from Cornell. He credited his grandfather, a legend in Swedish hockey, for his hit-first mindset.

But the physical style of play has taken a toll on Murray, who has slowed a step in recent seasons. The Sharks depth on defense made Murray, whose contract expires at the end of this season, more expendable.

SOMEWHERE OVER NEVADA — No direct contact with Sharks today as I ended up with an afternoon flight from MSP to Orange County.

But I did knock out a quick story — still amazed by the wonders of Wifi at 33,000 feet — that looks at the standings today and the unhappy numbers beyond the most important one of points (32) and spot in the standings (9th in the West).

Here’s the quick cut-and-paste with quotes coming from the post-game scrums in Minnesota (a peak behind the curtain for anyone who cares):

No one with the Sharks could have been happy looking at the NHL standings Sunday.

For the first time all season, the team was definitively on the outside looking in at the Western Conference playoffs. In the “goals for” column, no team had fewer than San Jose’s meager 71. And now their next two games are against the soaring Anaheim Ducks, a home-and-home series that begins Monday night at the Honda Center.

Still, even after his team dropped to 1-3 on its current road trip, coach Todd McLellan wasn’t ready to declare the clock is ticking loudly as his team tries to turn things around. Not when there are still 19 games remaining and 38 points on the table.

“There’s a lot of games left and the teams are going to play each other. That’s the thing. There aren’t any Eastern teams that are involved in this,” McLellan said. “Teams are going to play each other. We finish up in Anaheim on Monday. That’ll be our 15th of 20 on the road and we’ve got a lot of home games left.”

Eleven of the final 17 games are at HP Pavilion and that provides one reason for hope that doesn’t sound like wishful thinking.

San Jose only has lost once in regulation at home, going 8-1-4 to this point while falling to 5-11-2 on the road. Two years ago the Sharks ruled on the road at 23-14-4 and even last year — when the team barely made the playoffs – their record was 17-17-7

“I guess you can say there’s been a lot of things that haven’t gone the way we wanted them to this year. Winning on the road is one of them,” forward Logan Couture said.

Not that the season-high, seven-game homestand that begins Wednesday isn’t treacherous. Twenty-four hours after the Wednesday night rematch with the Ducks, San Jose plays its third game in four nights with the Detroit Red Wings providing the opposition.

Scoring continues to be the biggest challenge. After being shut out 2-0 by the Minnesota Wild, San Jose found itself at the bottom of the NHL with a 2.20 goals per game average. And with both Anaheim and Detroit in the NHL top ten for allowing the fewest goals, the task doesn’t get any easier.

Looking deeper at the Sharks overall 13-11-6 record provides more cause for concern. The combined number of regulation and overtime wins is the first tie-breaker for playoff seedings and San Jose has fewer than any team in the West with eight; of the teams now ahead of them in the standings, none has fewer than 13.

Barring a setback, forward Ryane Clowe is expected to return to the lineup Monday night after missing the last three games with a shoulder injury. Clowe is still looking for his first goal.

****The latest on any interest the Philadelphia Flyers may or may not have in Dan Boyle comes from Sam Carchidi of the Philaelphia Flyers, who says via Twitter, that for now, the team he covers is not interested in Boyle. Considering the Flyers are lower in the standings than the Sharks that makes more sense than if Philadelphia were interested.

If you missed the mention on Twitter yesterday, Flyers GM Paul Holmgren was in Xcel for the Sharks-Wild game and, yes, was talking with Doug Wilson.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – The Sharks 2-0 loss to the Minnesota Wild this afternoon was one of missed opportunities and that’s the angle taken in the print edition story that focuses on Logan Couture missing that open net in the second period.

You can find that online now at http://www.mercurynews.com/sharks/ci_22856721/san-jose-sharks-lose-at-minnesota-wild-2

The story also touches on how special teams let the Sharks down. Both Wild goals came on power-play situations, even if James Sheppard has stepped back onto the ice before Zach Parise opened the scoring.

But here are some things from the post-game locker room that didn’t make the paper:

****Todd McLellan’s summary of the game touched on both of the above.

“Special teams let us down,” he said. “It’s not that we were horrendous in those areas, but they beat us in power play and penalty kill situations. Other than that, 5-on-5, I thought we played even or maybe even had more scoring opportunities.

“You think back to a penalty shot, you think back to Cooch’s open net, you think back to the breakaway that created the penalty shot, you thing back to Burns’s breakaway — there were a number of chances when we were in looking at the goaltender and we didn’t find a way to put it in the net. That’s probably the best way of summarizing it.”

Then he touched on the issue of effort that routinely comes up after every game.

“The effort and commitment level was there, although I don’t think we should stand here after a game and check off if it was there or not. It should be there every night.

“I thought our guys were hungry,” he continued. “We’ll have to look . . . whether we got in Backstorm’s face at all. I do believe we were for a lot of it, but he had a real good night and helped his team win.”

On Couture’s miss: “It’s a tough angle, it was a hurried play and he had to get it up and get it off. I’m sure he’d like to have it back. Nine out of ten times he’s going to put it in, it just happens tonight to be that tenth time and it didn’t work for him.”

ST. PAUL, Minn. – There are so many story lines for today’s game that they couldn’t all fit into one day of advance coverage.

Two stories — http://www.mercurynews.com/sharks/ci_22851648/san-jose-sharks-trades-minnesota-go-wild-side as well as http://www.mercurynews.com/sharks/ci_22853606/players-involved-sharks-wild-deals-engage-diplomacy — already have focused on the pair of blockbuster trades between the teams in the 2011 off-season.

But there are two other players facing their former teams for the first time this afternoon – James Sheppard going against the Wild, Torrey Mitchell going against the Sharks. And Charlie Coyle – a Sharks prospect who went to Minnesota in the Setoguchi-Burns deal – got short shrift in what’s been written so far.

We’ll start with Sheppard. The back story, of course, is he was a first-round draft pick with Minnesota in the 2006 draft who went straight to the NHL, arguably an organizational mistake. Then he tore his knee up in an off-season ATV accident, ended up in the Wild doghouse and was traded to San Jose on Aug. 7, 2011 for a third-round pick. He had a second round of surgery, spent last year in rehab and has played in 21 games for the Sharks this season, still looking for his first goal to go along with three assists.

So does he have extra motivation, considering all that happened with the Wild”

“Whatever happens in any situation, you’ve got good and bad,” Sheppard said this morning. “I don’t have any hard feelings per se, but I’m ready to give the fans what I couldn’t give them before.”

The print edition story is going to look at those two trades between the Sharks and Minnesota Wild some 21 months ago and, yes, it’s pretty evident at this point in time that, for now, San Jose has not come out ahead. Still working on that one, but decided there were a few other things to pass along first.

Ryane Clowe won’t be in the lineup against the Wild on Saturday, but should be good-to-go Monday night in Anaheim after his first rigorous workout since aggravating a shoulder injury a week ago in Los Angeles.

“He looked a lot better today,” Todd McLellan said of Clowe. “He was involved a lot more physically, which is always a good sign with that type of injury.”

(Unless he no longer hangs out on Twitter, Clowe probably couldn’t miss the snide references to the fact Martin Brodeur now has one more goal than he does.)

*****Clowe and Douglas Murray are both unrestricted free agents at the end of this season and that makes them candidates to be moved before the April 3 trade deadline.

Both echoed Dan Boyle’s comments today about hoping they aren’t about to be leaving San Jose.

“I don’t pay too much attention to it,” Clowe said. “I’m in the same position as Boyler. I really like it here. I understand things happen, but I would like to stay here and see it through. Obviously I haven’t had the year I wanted, but it’s not affecting it, the trade rumors.”

Murray said he only worries about playing, noting that trades are more of the business side of things and out of his control.

EDMONTON, Alberta – It took a third-period comeback and a shootout to do it, but the Sharks managed to come away with two points Wednesday night by beating the Edmonton Oilers 4-3.

And if you want to know just how tightly the Western Conference standings are bunched once you get beyond Chicago and Anaheim, consider that all the Sharks did in the standings was hold their ground.

Had San Jose lost, the Sharks would have dropped below the line separating playoff teams from those whose seasons will end April 27. By winning, San Jose simply claimed the eighth seed for itself rather than the three-way tie there when the day started.

The print edition story focuses on Logan Couture’s two goals in regulation and one in the shootout – in part because he talked about being personally motivated when he plays the Oilers because, as a Canadian, he hears an awfully lot on the TV sports coverage about young Edmonton players such as Taylor Hall or Jordan Eberle.

As that story pointed out, Couture’s two goals gave him nine against Edmonton for his career – the most he has scored against any team. “I’m a Canadian kid so I spend a lot of time in Canada,” he said. “You turn on TSN or Sportsnet and everything is (Taylor) Hall, (Justin) Schulz, (Jordan) Eberle, (Ryan) Nugent-Hopkins, (Nail) Yakupov. It’s nice to come back and score a couple here.”

Just a little neener-neener there, right?

On to things that weren’t covered in the print edition.

*****Tommy Wingels talked about the team’s psyche when I asked if there was maybe a little more desperation in San Jose’s game after falling behind 3-1, trying to make the distinction between desperation and panic.

EDMONTON, Alberta – Dan Boyle’s name continues to show up in reputable sources of NHL trade rumors and this morning he acknowledged there’s no way you can not be aware of what’s circulating out there – and his unhappiness about that.

“I’ve got friends texting me and emailing,” Boyle said. “I do the best I can to keep it out, but I don’t like hearing that stuff.”

Later he added: “A lot of guys will say I don’t listen to that stuff, but the truth is, it does find its way inside.”

Boyle reportedly has a limited no-trade clause in his contract, one that gives him some control over where he might end up. And even though those rumors – the latest from Pierre LeBrun at ESPN suggests the New York Rangers are interested — show other teams may find Boyle an attractive add for a playoff push, he still doesn’t like any of it.

“This is where I want to be,” he said of the Sharks. “I don’t want to be anywhere else. . . . it’s not fun to hear it. The only other time my name was involved was five or six years ago (when he ended up coming to San Jose) so sometimes where there’s smoke there’s fire. I hope there’s not in this case, but it’s hard not to pay attention.”

In truth, Boyle’s name also came up during the off-season, linked again to the Rangers. That, of course, did not come to pass.

Without referring to Boyle specifically, this was Todd McLellan’s answer to a question on what impact trade rumors might be having on his team at the moment.

EDMONTON, Alberta – Different flights, of course, but today has been pretty much a pure travel day for the Sharks and the beat guy.

No newsy updates, no fresh perspectives on last night’s mistake-laden 5-3 loss to the Anaheim Ducks. The one piece of information I do wish I had was a sense of whether or not Ryane Clowe will play Wednesday night against the Oilers and that’s for selfish reasons. Tomorrow’s print edition story – built around interviews before Clowe was hurt — looks at his season and that big goose egg in the goals column.

Per usual, I won’t rehash everything here, though I will point out that Clowe’s nine assists do tie him with Logan Couture for third most on the team. Beyond that, I’ll also take advantage of the blog to get into a few things there just isn’t room for in the paper.

Like the fact I was wondering if his frustration over that zero has any connection to his first NHL suspension, two games for going after Chicago forward Andrew Shaw after he took a cheap shot at Joe Pavelski with only a few seconds left in the third period on Feb. 22. Or the fact he leads the team with 97 penalty minutes.

Nope, Clowe said, none of that is connected to his scoring slump.

“If you watch me, you can tell this year I’m not playing a frustrated game,” he said, going on to clarify his point: “If something happens, I get frustrated when people take liberties with my teammates. But that’s just hockey and that’s the way I’ve always been.”

****That maintenance day last week gave me a rare chance to watch the Sharks on TV, complete with replays. And there was one point in the second period of that 4-3 victory over Los Angeles that I thought Clowe was finally going to score. He drove the net, fired a shot at goalie Jonathan Quick, got his own rebound and fired another shot. Quick blocked that one, too, though it was the kind of shot that often finds its way behind a goalie.

ANAHEIM — Nothing after that 5-3 loss to the Anaheim Ducks that hasn’t been said before in this increasingly troubled season.

We can get to that later.

First, if you missed it elsewhere, I did attempt to find out what Hasso Plattner has been thinking since he became the de facto head of the Sharks ownership group back on Jan. 30 when the team was 6-0-0. Plattner said at the time that he would not be talking directly to the media, that all hockey questions should be directed to Doug Wilson, all business questions to Malcolm Bordelon. Same policy as his predecessors, Kevin Compton and Stratton Sclavos.

Still, things have reached the point where the questions of accountability include the general manager, no? And I’m not going to ask Doug Wilson about Doug Wilson’s performance. so I reached out to Plattner. We exchanged emails.

Here’s a cut and paste on the relevant graf from our online-only story:

Plattner acknowledged Monday that “the facts are the facts” as far as the team’s wins and losses, but declined to comment beyond that. Asked about accountability for players, coaches and the general manager, he again said all questions should be directed to Wilson.

Wilson, by the way, heads to Toronto on Tuesday for the NHL general manager’s meeting. He has indicated that the team remains committed to a “reset and refresh” approach to its roster that keeps the Sharks in playoff contention every year rather than a total overhaul that could mean missing the post-season for an extended period. The extent of any roster changes and whether they would come before the April 3 trade deadline likely would depend on what he sees from the team over the next two weeks.

****Now, back to that hockey game. The print edition story at http://www.mercurynews.com/sharks/ci_22820582/san-jose-sharks-lose-anaheim-ducks-5-3 focuses on the Sharks making the mistake of letting a hockey game turn into a track meet with Todd McLellan offering his thoughts on the breakdowns that led to the burst of Anaheim goals in the second period. I won’t get into all that here.

ANAHEIM – All the Sharks need to do tonight to get back into the win column is beat the Anaheim Ducks in a building where the home team is 11-1-0 this season.

Of course, the Ducks aren’t too shabby on the road either at 9-2-4.

On the brighter side, Anaheim will be without Corey Perry, serving the third of his four-game suspension for that illegal hit that nailed Minnesota forward Jason Zucker six days ago. Todd McLellan was asked something about catching a break without Perry in the lineup, and the Sharks coach’s answer circled around to a problem his own team has – not the Ducks.

“With all due respect to Corey — and I think this is a reflection of a very good team – they’re going to miss him and they do miss him, but they’re able to plug those holes and keep on going,” McLellan said. “That’s a sign of a real good hockey club. They have two 10-goal scorers. We have two. They have 10 players with five or more goals.”

Left unsaid? The Sharks have only four players with five goals are more – yet another reflection of San Jose’s offensive woes.

“Do you miss Corey Perry? Absolutely you do. Who wouldn’t miss Corey Perry?,” the Sharks coach continued “But they’ve made a decision they’re going to march on without him. They plug another player in and move their lines around a little bit and they keep on winning.”

Without Perry, the Ducks have sported lines of Palmieri-Getzlaf-Selanne, Ryan-Holland-Emerson, Cogliano-Koivu-Winnik and Beleskey-Steckel-Staubitz.

*****There will be lineup changes for the Sharks tonight, but not in goal as Antti Niemi gets the nod from McLellan despite letting in a few soft ones in that 5-2 loss to the Los Angeles Kings on Saturday night.

Ryane Clowe is out with that aggravated shoulder problem and it looks as if Justin Braun and Andrew Desjardins may be in the press box as well as they were the last San Jose players on the ice for an optional skate this morning. There were no call-ups from Worcester, but the Sharks did take Marty Havlat off IR and put Tim Kenned on it so it’s a pretty safe bet that Jason Demers and Havlat see action.